Previous >>151900349This time, it's 2017.Last time, with Lust for Lisa ended Mason Jarr was free to take the Starbuck Jones role and at Les's invitation stayed in Westview to peruse Holly/Cory's collection in order to study the role. While there, he met Cindy and there was an immediate attraction. Around the same time, Cindy was offered a newscasting job for an L.A. tech startup called Buddyblog and while there officially started dating Mason and so decided to take the job and move to California. When Mason didn't like the script for the movie she also helpfully offered up Pete's name as a possible writer necessitating his own move out to L.A. and Pete in turn got Darin a job as a storyboarder for the movie meaning he and Jessica would also need to move.While out there, though, Cindy became jealous of Mason's pretty and younger co-star Marianne Winters. Also there was Bio-Dad Frankie, now working for a TMZ knockoff. Following Mason and Marianne he was able to make it seem like the two were in a relationship which caused Marianne to have a breakdown but the now Mason Jarre was able to get to her and things worked themselves out. Also, the Mason Gang managed to track down original Starbuck Jones actor Cliff Anger, befriending him and getting him a role in the new movie.Back in Westview, Bull started showing odd behavior and explosive anger and it was discovered that he likely had CTE. This necessitated his early retirement from coaching. Cory came home from the army and sold off his Starbuck Jones collection so he could buy an engagement ring and propose to his girlfriend Roxanne "Rocky" Rhodes. John was also offered a consulting role for Starbuck Jones while the old school computer was taken away to be used as a prop in the film.
Funky and Holly get some examinations which turn into Funky and Holly doing estate planning which will turn into Funky vs. the DMV.
But hey, at lest it's Funky Winkerbean in the comic bearing his name and not Mason Jarre or Pete and Darin.
I don't really know what the critera for vertical strips is anymore. Typicall it was to emphasize something important but I think now it may as well be used because Ayers and Batiuk didn't want to be bothered drawing and inking three panels.
Well, that was certainly morose and depressing.
Summer appears for the first time in well over a year and she even has dialogue this time! Meanwhile, Les calls his black wife a monkey.
>>151926301Bad ass
The vendos are back. Also, remember how Logan was introduced as some super smart business wiz?
Get it?
Amazingly, Maris gets two strips dedicated to her this week and yet never actually speaks in either of them.
With this strip, Rick Burchett takes over penciling duties and the actual penciler starts to be credited too. He'll stay on for roughly the next year and a half before Ayers comes back.
Batiukism Alert: "What brings?" is an attempted casual way of asking "What brings you here?".Also this is really bzarre. Is the intent that Flash actually exists as a real live superhero in the Funkyverse and thus does all of his things? Or is it just supposed to be that the Fukyverse has a place called Central City which capitalizes on it with a tacky museum dedicated to a comic book character whose adventures take place in a fictional city also named Central City? Also if it's the latter, is this guy's name also Dexter Myles or do they just hire someone to play the character like when actors are hired to be Benjamin Franklin or Disney Princesses?
Is that Herbie Popnecker?
Burchett's characters some times look a bit wonkier and off model but the flipside is that there's a lot more going on. The characters do more, the poses tend to be more dynamic and expressive, the use of varied camera angles and such. So overall I tend to find it a little better to look at compared to how boring and stiff the art had become.
I think this one may have been drawn a while before because I'm pretty sure I remember seeing this poster in the background of a 2016 strip.
Introduction of Jack Kirby knockoff Phil Holt who will be subject to one of the stupider retcons.
Pete meets Mindy which starts yet another relationship that will outlive this strip and migrate into Crankshaft where not content to take over the last few years of Funky Winkerbean, Mopey has begun taking over Crankshaft as well. Pete and Mindy will get engaged in a few years but as 2025 rolls ino 2026 they're STILL not actually married.
That fifth strip is I believe the one where Pete's last name is infamously changed from Roberts to Reynolds. Why is it changed? Did Batiuk forget his last name was Roberts or did he just feel like changing it? Who knows?
And a P. Craig Russell piece. As mentioned, he and Batiuk have a history as back in the '70s Batiuk tried to sell a space opera strip that would have been drawn by Russell.
Cindy and Mason are now married, as are the geezers I don't really give two shits about.
>>151926580It feels like it could be read either way but the only things we know>Central City is a real place in the Funkyverse>There is a Flash Museum that looks like the one in the Silver Age comics>They likely know Barry Allen is or was the Flash since they know Iris is Barry's wife>Funkyverse takes place in the same universe as Dick Tracy, which implied the existence of Batman
A visit to the rotting husk of Ed Crankshaft who is simultaeously still old but much more spry.
You've already used the bye week joke multiple times.
Anyway, these are the first appearances of Buck Bedlow, ex-Big Walnut Tech player who will stick around for the next couple of years as Bull's buddy until, well, events.
I think this is the point where the Crankshaft crossovers start to become annoying because they seem to be premised on you, as a reader of Funky Winkerbean, knowing or caring who characters like this old crone are supposed to be.
And yes, I know it's Lillian McKenzie. I just don't care because I have zero real interest in Crankshaft.Also it hasn't been ten years since he wrote Lisa's Story. The book wsn't finished and didn't come out until 2010 and since Summer's graduated (oh hey, she made TWO appearances this year) who knows if it's still doing the semi-realtime shtick.
Oh yes, for the first time in 30+ years Batiuk drags Rita Wrighton out of mothballs and we learn her married name is Reynolds. So is her husband intended to be related to Pete Formerly-Roberts-Now-Reynolds?
Cayla being over 50 is another timeline screw up because her father's big arc in Crankshaft was in the early 2000s where he was a hotshot pitcher so presumably he'd have been somewhere in his 20s or 30s. Then around the time Cayla and Les are engaged, the college-aged version of her shows up in Crankshaft and remember this is supposed to be around a 10 year time difference.So realistically Cayla should be around Wally's age which would also make her having a college-aged daughter fairly unlikely unless she got pregnant in middle or high school. But she's always come off as being older than that. As usual, it makes no sense.
Yeah, introduce Phil Holt just to kill him three months later so Darin can look noble by selling his artwork and donating the money to the most important charity ever.
Another random callback to a story from the very early days of the comic that most people reading at the time wouldn't have actually remembered. It's all done, of course, to give the illusion of there being more continuity and history than there actually is.
And we follow that up with a week dedicated to a John Darling character. Anyone but the actual cast of Funky Winkerbean.
>>151927316Whoops
Phil's a ghost and hanging around with fellow ghost Lisa to watch over Dopey and the Bimbo's auction. Really, what kind of afterlife is that?It's also going to make the Phil retcon even more nonsensical.
Remember when Becky had an actual character and plot relevance and shit?
We'll close out the year with Dinkle and the Bedside decrepits' musical who gives a shit.
I really cannot overstate how much I hate every single strip related to Morton and the old folks band.
It's irritating how the last 5 or 6 years of the strip are basically about everyone EXCEPT the actual main characters. It's about Mason and Hollywood, it's about Pete and Darin and their comic buddies, it's about Dinkle and the old farts, it's about Crankshaft characters. Even Les recedes into the background beyond random book signing weeks aside from one later story.
I will fucking take a thousand smug, annoying Les faces over these dull, uninteresting, unfunny fossilsAlso, sending a bunch of old people to wander around Memphis seems like a bad idea.
>>151927441At least it gives Dinkle something to do, I’ll take that over endless weeks of “DUDE COMIC BOOKS LMAO”
That's it for this year.Next time will be 2018. Pete and Darin move back to Ohio when Chester Hagglemore makes them an offer and the three of them decide to start a comic book company. That's right, the main (and only real) ongoing story of next year is the birth of Atomik Komix.
>>151927563Dinkle at this point is just another dumb old man and even more of a husk of what he was than the half-dead Ed Crankshaft from those strips with Mindy. He's only around because he was popular back in the '80s and thus Batiuk was unwilling to retire him despite the fact he no longer fits and is hardly even the same character anymore.
>>151927137I don't remember her at all
>>151926313>I've never had a passportHe literally took the band to Russia
>>151927612She was a teacher in the very early years of the strip whose whole thing was that she was the younger, more bright-eyed and liberal type to contrast the stodgier and more jaded faculty like Fred and Al. That went away and she became just another teacher, then was married off and retired around 1976. She hung around for a few more years either years either playng tennis with Ann or reading from a wine book before fading ou completely. The last time she showed up was at Ann and Fred's wedding back in 1984.
>>151927622And Saudi Arabia. And I think the having to go to Belgium (or another European country) to get an award for band candy sales was a story in I want to say early Act II or late Act I.
>>151926580>>151926909Also while looking through the old comics, Funkyverse Flash Museum is based on the design in Flash #154 from 1965. The Museum had a different look in the 70s/80s and so far I haven't found anything post-COIE that looks like itIf it's real, does that mean that only the Silver Age Flash is canon?
Actually, the band also had a European tour during that story where they were a musical sensation now that I think about it.
>>151926286how very 物の哀れ of you, funky.
>>151926301these covers are the best part of act 3
>>151926587Harry watching a once good comic strip burn to the ground
>>151926652Conan o'Brian?
>>151927804Yeah, but it doesn't get to be the good Conan. Or even the reasonably adequate version that at least had Wikibear.
>>151926857Or the bimbo reporter just got it wrong.
>>151927206At this stage there's no point trying to make any sense out of the timeline. It's just all nonsense spaghetti that got dumped all over the floor.
>>151927236Um, Lisa is basically GOD in this universe, chud. Show some respect.
>>151927658Ah, right. I remember those tennis strips
>>151927287The first strip here gave me an epiphany. I just realized who Les reminds me of. Fucking DOBSON.
>>151927940You know it’s funny, the little time travel arc a few days ago reminded me there was a whole time where Les broke up with Lisa because she was being insane and overbearing, I don’t think that’s ever been brought up again
>>151927556Why is she acting like Funky has no idea who Dinkle is?
>>151927835That's just a very random pick for a comic con host
>>151928058I'd assume it's in there because Batiuk is a Conan fan.
>>151928039Why is it a surprise to him that his dad is in a musical group led by Dinkle when they played at the time travel reunion and at least one Fourth of July concert?
>>151927734I suppose Nordic is just mono no aware but very white.
>>151926286>>151926292Looks like we're missing a strip. I checked gocomics and they only have a crankshaft for this date. You would think finding full archives of sunday newspapers from 2017 would not be that hard but it's evidently too much for me.
>>151928915Yeah, another GoComics screw up. How they haven't fixed it or the other issues I don't know.
>>151926286>>151926292>>151928915
>>151926292>Jim Shooter at DC
>>151926433How could any artist NOT put Tintin in the scene
>>151929421It's just comic shit... and like everything else completely contradictory. The collection John bought wasn't a general Golden Age collection, it was specifically a collection of every Timely comic. Thus he shouldn't have a Golden Age Flash comic. But I guess Batiuk wasn't going to let go of his obvious DC preference if he was going to feature an actual real comic in the strip.
>>151928058>>151928337It's not entirely random. Conan was getting more involved with SDCC around the mid/late 2010s. He was having his show live at SDCC during the SDCC weeks for years and Funko made a bunch of Conan Funko Pops for SDCC each year. https://geeksofdoom.com/2015/07/11/sdcc-2015-conan-hosts-cast-game-throneshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4M5KE44xluohttps://www.cardboardconnection.com/funko-pop-conan-o-brien-figureshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MrAPfVl-uIhttps://press.wbd.com/ca/media-release/tbs-0/conan/conan-announces-guest-lineup-week-shows-during-comic-conr-international-0
>>151927963jesus you're right.
>>151926580>>Also this is really bzarre. Is the intent that Flash actually exists as a real live superhero in the Funkyverse and thus does all of his things?Hilariously, no. Although it would have been great to have the guys mug with the Inertia statue not realizing it's actually him.
>>151926675Why is Cornhole O'Brien here
>>151926701>Cliff AngerFuck me, I only got it now
>>151927157FUCK OFF LISA
>>151929656See >>151929601Batiuk was probably aware Conan was now a regular presence during SDCC
>>151927220Hey it's the Skibidi Toilet guy
>>151927206have you considered there's a time anomaly surrounding westview?
>>151927686>Funky winkerbean>Acknowledging comics exist past the silver age for reasons other than to shit on themPick one
>>151926512Eight years later, and oh-for-three with the cancer cure seeming the most likely to happen first.
>>151926641Oh, hey, Herbie Popnecker.
>>151929838He puts in references to Byrne's work, that stuff is post-Silver Age
>>151926641The Fat Fury himself
>>151929641All he's missing is about 100 lbs of fat and eyebrows flying off his head
>>151929754More interesting idea than anything he actually wrote
>>151926301It's nice but it's no Six-Gun Gorilla.
>>151927441you're really gonna diss my boi Morton and the old folks band like that>>151927963that explains Les' inflated ego
